[Footnote 1: 

  Ubi visus eris nostra medicabilis arte
  Fac monitis fugias otia prima meis.

Ovid.  Rem.  Am.]

[Footnote 2:  [it]]

* * * * *

ADVERTISEMENT.

From the Parish-Vestry, January 9.

All Ladies who come to Church in the New-fashioned Hoods,
are desired to be there before Divine Service begins,
lest they divert the Attention of the Congregation.

RALPH.

* * * * *

No. 273.  Saturday, January 12, 1712.  Addison.

  Notandi sunt tibi Mores.

  Hor.

Having examined the Action of Paradise Lost, let us in the next place consider the Actors. [This is Aristotle’s Method of considering, first the Fable, and secondly [1]] the Manners; or, as we generally call them in English, the Fable and the Characters.

Homer has excelled all the Heroic Poets that ever wrote, in the Multitude and Variety of his Characters.  Every God that is admitted into this Poem, acts a Part which would have been suitable to no other Deity.  His Princes are as much distinguished by their Manners, as by their Dominions; and even those among them, whose Characters seem wholly made up of Courage, differ from one another as to the particular kinds of Courage in which they excel.  In short, there is scarce a Speech or Action in the Iliad, which the Reader may not ascribe to the Person that speaks or acts, without seeing his Name at the Head of it.

Homer does not only outshine all other Poets in the Variety, but also in the Novelty of his Characters.  He has introduced among his Grecian Princes a Person who had lived thrice the Age of Man, and conversed with Theseus, Hercules, Polyphemus, and the first Race of Heroes.  His principal Actor is the [Son [2]] of a Goddess, not to mention the [Offspring of other Deities, who have [3]] likewise a Place in his Poem, and the venerable Trojan Prince, who was the Father of so many Kings and Heroes.  There is in these several Characters of Homer, a certain Dignity as well as Novelty, which adapts them in a more peculiar manner to the Nature of an Heroic Poem.  Tho at the same time, to give them the greater Variety, he has described a Vulcan, that is a Buffoon among his Gods, and a Thersites among his Mortals.

Virgil falls infinitely short of Homer in the Characters of his Poem, both as to their Variety and Novelty. AEneas is indeed a perfect Character, but as for Achates, tho he is stiled the Heros Friend, he does nothing in the whole Poem which may deserve that Title. Gyas, Mnesteus, Sergestus and Cloanthus, are all of them Men of the same Stamp and Character.

 —­Fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.